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student council and had aspirations of becoming a Massachusetts State trooper. Since the age of thirteen, Gigi had worked in a local store slicing deli meats. Both boys had played instruments in the Saint Anthony’s Church marching band. Eddie was accepted and enrolled in Bentley College and studied accounting. Gigi had enrolled at Bunker Hill Community College and began taking legal courses to help him pursue his dream of law enforcement. Don and Corrine Portalla had managed to help their children evade the pitfalls that so many young Revere kids can’t help but trip on during their adolescent years.

    The Portalla homestead in the Revere projects. The apartment next to the one with the window boarded up is where the family lived for almost twenty years.
    Around this time, Corrine’s father became gravely ill. As a last request before his passing, he asked her to promise that she would tell the boys the long-held family secret of their biological father. Reluctantly, she complied with his deathbed wish.
    Once the family secret was revealed, it hit Gigi as strongly as when Paul was converted to Christianity by being stricken blind while on the road to Damascus. Gigi was now confronted with a dilemma: reject Eddie, his birth father, and his criminal behavior; or embrace his true father and inevitably become like him. Incapable of weighing the consequences of this greed gone mad, he had to make a choice that would shape who he was and who he would become. Eddie took the news a bit more in stride. Both boys wanted to know more about their hero father who had been cut down in his prime.
    In 1981, Gigi went to the Angiulo headquarters in the North End of Boston on Prince Street. Jerry Angiulo was more approachable than most underworld figures. He was always willing to talk to the people of the neighborhood. This kind of goodwill helped to keep him insulated from law enforcement. Gigi approached him with the intention of working for him. Angiulo attempted to pacify him by saying that he was busy, but perhaps he could see him another time. Nevertheless, Gigi insisted, saying, “No, no you know my father. My father worked for you. He got killed, but I’m here and I wanna work for you guys, just like my father did.” Still, it was to no avail; his pleas fell on deaf ears. But Gigi left determined to follow in his father’s footsteps. During this same time, he took the Massachusetts State Police exam in hopes of possibly still becoming a trooper and making his mom proud and his dream a reality. He scored a ninety on the exam, which is truly impressive. Unfortunately, the state of Massachusetts had just implemented Proposition 2½, which severely limited spending statewide. This legislation meant that Gigi would not be hired since his test score was not high enough and he did not have veteran’s status, which would raise him on the list of potential new troopers to be hired.

    Eddie Portalla’s yearbook photo from Revere High School, 1979. Courtesy of Revere High School .

    Vazza’s Restaurant, where Eddie worked while in high school as a cook.

    Gigi as a senior and captain of the football team. Courtesy of Revere High School .

    Saint Anthony of Padua Church, where Gigi and Eddie attended Mass and played in the marching band.
    In 1983, he married his girlfriend, Gina Scarpa, and quickly settled into married life. His first arrest came in New Hampshire. He and three friends were parked in front of the Turkey Farm restaurant in Nashua. The Nashua Police noticed that one of the men fit the description of a man they were seeking in an armed robbery case. The officer initiated a traffic stop on the vehicle and proceeded to search the auto and its occupants. The search turned up guns and masks but nothing to link the men to an armed robbery. Gigi took a plea bargain offer and was sentenced to twenty-five months in a New Hampshire state prison on a simple gun charge. The district attorney and the